Flew, Schroeder, Varghese: What a company!

By Mark Perakh

Posted November 10, 2007

For the last few years (beginning,
I believe, in 2004) a lot of noise has been filling a number of websites
regarding the "conversion" of British author Antony Flew from atheism
to deism. Recently a new book [1], ostensibly
authored by Flew, was published by HarperCollins, wherein Flew's newly adopted
deistic worldview is defended. Two Christian propagandists, Roy Varghese and Bob
Hostetler, and, indirectly, Jewish religious propagandist Gerald Schroeder seem
to have played a substantial role in producing that book. (See, for example, http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/11/yet-more-on-ant.html).

Some advocates of theism try to present Flew's "conversion"
as a supposedly important event somehow proving their beliefs. Is it indeed an important event deserving
numerous posts and articles? Let us see.

To start with, to view deism as
closer either to theism or to atheism is a matter of viewpoint. In some respect
deism is not much different from atheism [2]. Deists typically do not share any
tenets of Abrahamic religions -- they do not believe in the resurrection of
Jesus, life after death, a god that is interested in human affairs, and in any
other articles of faith of Christians, Jews, or Muslims. Historically some
Christian philosophers even viewed deists as just a subspecies of atheists. Therefore the conversion of an atheist to
deism may sometimes require no drastic upheaval in his worldview. Since reportedly Flew still remains unbelieving
in the tenets of Abrahamic religions, his conversion actually offers little
comfort to orthodox believers like Varghese or Schroeder. All that (reportedly) happened is that a
certain atheist whose atheism probably was never as strong as some religious
propagandists want now to present it, changed nuances of his worldview -- is
this indeed a big event?

Another point is the role of Flew
in promoting atheistic philosophy. Contrary to what religious propagandists are
now shouting with gaping mouths, Flew hardly had ever been the most notorious or most influential
atheist. While he wrote many books and
articles, even his most widely known early essay (of 1957) "Theology and Falsification," not
to mention the rest of his output, has been known mainly within the narrow
circle of philosophers of religion. It has had an insignificant impact beyond
that circle. Just look at the following
short (and far from complete) list of names: Richard Dawkins [3], Christopher Hitchens
[4], Sam Harris [5], Daniel Dennett [6], Victor Stenger [7], David Mills [8],
etc. Each of the people in this list (plus many others) qualifies as a more
influential and better known atheist than Flew. Certainly, if, say, Flew's British compatriot Dawkins suddenly
announced his conversion to theism, this would be a much more unexpected and
loudly echoed event, far exceeding the effect of Flew's conversion.

One more factoid that is discussed
is that Flew is reported to be 84 years of age. Of course, every individual
ages at his own rate. The prominent biologist Ernst Mayr, who died at almost
101, seemed to have preserved a clear mind until the end. Recently the founder and leader of a world-famous Russian dance company, Igor
Moyseev, died at the age of almost 102 and was reported to be agile and
clear-minded until the last day of his long life. Compared to Moyseev and Mayr, Flew is still in early stages of
aging. Nevertheless, unlike Mayr and
Moyseev, his mental power may be deteriorating at a faster pace. Indeed, he
reportedly has problems even with recognizing the names of people mentioned in that
newest book [1] which he supposedly has authored.

These facts alone seem to be good
reason to take his "conversion" with a grain of salt. (In fact, the new
book supposedly authored by Flew seems to be written not by Flew himself, but to
a large extent by Varghese and Hostetler [9].) However, let us not concentrate on the question of the ethical propriety
of publishing a book that seems to be written in fact by two highly biased
ghostwriters using Flew's name as a supposed author. Assume that Flew indeed
has sincerely converted to deism and agrees with the contents of Varghese-Hostetler's
concoction. What is the significance of that conversion?

I submit that Flew's conversion is
a non-event. To explain why I think so, it may be sufficient, besides the above
mentioned exaggeration of Flew's role as an influential atheist, just to look
at how Flew himself explained his "conversion."

A telltale detail in this respect
seems to be Flew's reference (first
given, then withdrawn, and then again revived) to the impression he gained from
the supposedly scientific pro-theistic arguments by Gerald Schroeder.

While I am not that familiar with
Flew's literary output, I am well familiar with that by Schroeder. If Flew was impressed by Schroeder, it
means, I believe, that either he never possessed much intellectual power, or
perhaps indeed is a victim of the early onset of senility. Being myself just
one year younger than Flew, I certainly sympathize with his intellectual
deterioration, but it hardly can be ignored if we wish to judge the importance
of his "conversion."

To see what I mean, let us talk a
little about Schroeder. He is the
author of three popular books [10,11,12] where he suggested supposedly "scientific"
arguments "proving" the harmony between science and the book of
Genesis. My critique of Schroeder's output is found in [13,14,15]. Another
critique of Schroeder's publications (by Matt Young) is found at http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung/BkRevs.htm.

I had a chance to meet Gerald
Schroeder in person. It happened a few years ago in Miami Beach, where a conference
organized by several religious bodies was held on the relationship between
science and religion. Schroeder was a
member of a panel and was sitting on the podium next to another author of books
propagandizing the full compatibility of the book of Genesis with science,
Nathan Aviezer. (I was familiar with the books by both Aviezer and Schroeder,
which, I believe, both contain plainly erroneous notions. While Aviezer's book [16]
shows his confusion regarding probability [17], Schroeder's opuses show Schroeder's
illiteracy in elementary physics, simply stunning given his PhD degree in
physics from MIT -- see below.)

When the Q&A period started at
the Miami Beach conference, I raised my hand, and was given the floor. I
started by saying that the books by Aviezer and Schroeder (highly acclaimed by
several speakers) both contained errors. I had not yet finished my first
sentence, when Aviezer interrupted me, shouting from the podium, "Give
just one example! Give at least one example! Just one example!" When Aviezer
stopped shouting, I said, "If you let me speak, I'd be happy to give the
examples. Let me start with the errors in the output of Schroeder, and then I
will address your errors. Let us look at how Schroeder describes the
photoelectric effect….." At this moment Schroeder started hysterically shouting,
not letting me say a single additional word. He continued shouting until the
moderator said "Please move your debate to the lobby, after the session is
over."I had no choice but to sit
down, having thus been deprived of a chance to publicly speak about the errors
in Aviezer's and Schroeder's output. (Of course, neither Aviezer nor Schroeder appeared
for a discussion after the session.) This episode demonstrated that, besides being stunningly ignorant of
elementary physics (see below) Schroeder possesses a good dose of arrogance and
lack of interest in truth. One of the displays of his contempt for truth is his
claim (in particular printed in the conference's program) that he has been affiliated
with the famous Weizmann Institute in Israel. Inquiries made at Weizmann Institute resulted in denials by Weizmann's
representatives of having such a person in any way affiliated with that
respectable institution. In fact, Schroeder turned out to be affiliated with Aish
HaTorah, an Israeli outreach religious institution whose activity is aimed at
prodding Jews who lost faith to return to the fold. Nevertheless, the assertions
of Schroeder's allegedly being somehow affiliated with Weizmann Institute can
still be found in print without any attempt from Schroeder to admit the
falsehood of that assertion.

So, let us take a brief look at
Schroeder as a physicist. He sports a PhD degree from MIT. I am not familiar with the procedure
employed by MIT to grant PhD degrees, so hopefully Schroeder's degree is an
exception and does not exemplify the normal level of proficiency of MIT graduates.

Schroeder's ignorance of elementary
physics is stunning for a professional physicist.

In my book [13] there is a chapter
discussing Schroeder's egregious flops, which would result in an F grade for a
freshman in an average community college. I will not repeat all that critique which is also available online [14,
15]. I will provide here just a few examples.

One telltale point is how Schroeder
described the photoelectric effect [10]. Let us not concentrate on such minor
errors as, for example, his attributing to Einstein the experimental results
which in fact had to be credited to Hertz and/or Millikan, although even these
misattributions testify to his lack of familiarity with the material he writes
about. More importantly, Schroeder obviously is grossly confused about the
physics of the effect. For example, he
states erroneously that the color of light (i.e. the wavelength) determines the
photocurrent. Wrong. The wavelength in fact determines the energy of
photoelectrons (measured via the stopping voltage) but does not affect the
photocurrent (which is determined by the light intensity). This is the stuff of
elementary college physics.

Another really stunning assertion
by Schroeder is that masers are devices which emit atoms. What an amazing ignorance! Masers emit
electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. (Optical masers, usually also
called lasers, emit visible light.)

One of the especially preposterous
assertions by Schroeder is that a system's temperature drops when its volume expands,
because the available heat "dilutes" in an increased volume. This is
nonsense, known to be such since the work by Rumford at the end of the 18th
century when he showed that "heat" (more properly to be referred as
thermal energy) is not a "caloric liquid" but a form of motion. This
point is routinely discussed in chapters on thermodynamics in introductory
courses of college physics.

One more example of the (many)
absurdities asserted by Schroeder is his discussion [11] of frames of reference
wherein photons are at rest (thus making the flow of time stop). He seems not to know that, according to the
special theory of relativity, photons move with the speed of light in all inertial
frames of reference, hence frames of reference wherein photons are at rest are
impossible.

In his third book [12] Schroeder
suggests a formula where a constant is presented as equal to a variable. Some defenders of Schroeder (in email
messages) tried to justify Schroeder's absurd formula by saying that, while it
indeed is wrong in a classical interpretation, it becomes justified in a
relativistic interpretation. This is an
invalid argument. First, Schroeder clearly applied his formula only for a
classical case. Second, while in a relativistic interpretation the quantity
which in the classical case is a constant indeed becomes a variable, the two variables
found on the opposite sides of Schroeder's equation vary following two completely
different regularities, so Schroeder's formula remains absurd also in a
relativistic case.

Schroeder's attempt [10,11] to reconcile
the scientific data about the age of the universe with the Genesis story of six
days of creation by using theory of relativity shows his abject lack of
understanding of relativity (see details both in the article by Stenger [18] and
in my posts [13,14]).

The list of preposterous statements
revealing a level of ignorance stunning for a PhD from MIT could easily be
prolonged.

It is perhaps proper to add that
Schroeder's texts show not only his illiteracy in elementary physics, but also in
some cases his inability to comprehend even the plain text of the Torah, which
he misread in a ridiculous way (see details in [13, 14]).

Now let us return to Flew. If he
was "impressed" by Schroeder's allegedly scientific pro-theism
arguments, what does that say about Flew's own intellectual prowess today?

Alas, the above seems to show that
even if Flew earlier in his life used to be an intellectually strong author,
his age-caused decline may have impaired his mental abilities to an extent
making his conversion to deism just a subject for a story which may be
considered either sad or funny, depending on the observer's vantage point, but
in any case without any significance for the theism vs atheism confrontation.

On the other hand, if the
information regarding the manipulation of the old man by the likes of Varghese
and Hostetler (plus the seemingly flexible moral standards of some members of the
HarperCollins's editorial stuff) is confirmed, this would make the story not as
much sad as ugly.

References

[1] Antony Flew. There Is a God: How the World's Most
Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. Harper One, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2007.